Hey, I have the choice of forging a Necronomicon and a Tome of Pain for my upcoming prot priest, though I don’t think I’ll be making both unless it’s really essential to have both. I’m wondering, is Tome of Pain more worth it for the big damage? Or is Necronomicon just a solid thing to use.
Also, which do you think is more fun? If one over the other at all.
In my honest opinion, I don’t think you should waste your feed power on either. Both feel like a toned down version of the necromancer’s ability, and in almost any situation it is better to have prot or puri. If you don’t have puri, I would definitely recommend crafting one! Being able to just say “no” to being sickened is pretty phenomenal.
That being said, if you find yourself soloing a fair amount of dungeons on this priest, I would recommend Necronomicon. Cursing an enemy will make your weapon do more damage, and while you will also take increased damage during this time, if you are not confident in your position you can just use a normal tome instead.
^ This to the highest extent. Both of these tomes aren’t exactly the best in any situation, especially with the group steamroll meta in place. Honestly I’d say the best idea is to forge a wand such as wand of the fallen, robe such as water dragon silk robe, or ring such as esben’s wedding ring, as currently the best priest set’s only use support tomes (like fungal tome hint hint ) rather than dps tomes. To be dead honest, I think if you have enough forge material, go for a fungal tome forge as it is easily the tome currently for healing, making your priest help in group play and have higher chances for survival in solo play.
personally I like pain tome more than necro but the curse is ok for solo play but you also curse yourself. pain tome also gives better stats.
I would go tome of pain if you really want to craft one of those two. We’re in a lib event so ppl are calling libs a lot more then usual and it’s probably not super difficult to get a Necromincon. If you must craft one of the two and for some reason just want to skip the entire lib event, I would go necromincon simply because it’s a smaller investment. You can use the remaining bit to craft a ml robe which will allow you to spam your tomes 
Tome of Pain is by far the better of the two in my experience. It’s mostly useful for dungeons where you can clear or mostly clear a room instantly with it, good for clearing and rushing. The healing is not great but enough you can shrug off most damage you take getting close to things. Nice stat bonuses too.
Necronomicon is just odd. It sort of works the same way as you need to stand in the middle of things to use it, the effect being centred on you. But it does no damage, just makes things a little easier to kill, at the same time as making you a little easier to kill. Probably best kept as a backup curse item when there’s no-one else able to curse.
Has is been awhile since you last used the necronomicon? It was reworked considerably with the release of Exalt and now fires five projectiles in a horizontal line that deal damage and curse, with 9 tile range.
I’ve tried out the Necronimicon 2-3 times fairly recently. Even though I’m not usually too picky about what I’m wearing, the projectiles move too slowly for my liking. Perhaps it’s partly because I’d rather play mystic to curse, but even in terms of damage, the reward to effort ratio has made me stray away from that option. I’d rather just forge it into something I like better, to be honest, even after that buff.
Not a fan of either. Necronomicon inflicts a curse on self which is really dangerous on a squishy class like priest, and tome of pain requires a full wis build to be used effectively, and even then it is still too mana hungry to really do much. If you want a DPS priest I suggest:
Oryx ST set. Merlot is a phenomenal tome for damage, and the rest of the rest really pumps up your DPS stats. My priest out damages my archer with the set, it is very good. You can just use Merlot with other DPS items too
Chaotic Scripture + Mlab robe. Chaotic scripture is pretty mana hungry, but the damage doesn’t wis scale, so you can instead run DPS items and a madlab robe to cut the cost down.
I really want to see necronomicon and tome of pain get buffed. Necronomicon is really cool in that it curses yourself, but it just isn’t good enough to justify using it. I would love to see the damage buffed a lot, along with a lower MP cost.
For tome of pain I would like to see it have more damage and/or a lower MP cost. It is really only useful in midgame dungeons to clear out rooms, trying to use it in harder dungeons is too dangerous. It doesn’t have the damage to kill the enemies, and the healing isn’t good enough to survive until the enemies die.
If you are serious about crafting either one of these, then I say necronomicon as a curse will help out everybody whereas tome of pain just adds a measly ~600 damage on use in a short radius (~900 damage with a radius of ~9 with a full wis set, but you would be doing more damage with a regular DPS set anyway)
I’ve never used a Tome of Pain, but I do keep a Necronomicon as only DPS-boosting tome on my Priest. (More because I don’t have any others…)
Like Skandling said, it’s best used if you really don’t have any other Cursers. Conversely, Tome of Pain can be quite effective when it comes to clearing out some minions, something wand classes don’t struggle too much with, given their piercing, but they also don’t have many wands with a wide spread.
Thanks both of you! I wish I had a puri, I’m definitely going to grab one as soon as I can. I had a book of geb prepared, but when exalt happened it got nerfed, which does blow a bit. But, yeah, thanks for the advice,
I’d definitely rather help out I think. Sounds like it could be really useful if I’m just with some blokes.
Puri is very easy to get now. Or at least I got three this month, over the span of less than a week, while farming Manors for the Rogue ST set. All three were from coffins, not from the boss, but I was clearing every Manor to find all of them, for the last part of the Rogue set.
Geb tome is great for rushing since it’s the only speedy tome now. I’d definitely keep that for a swap.
As for puri, you can also forge it, so it is very accessible.
Geb tome is actually really great now. It is the only tome that gives speedy, and it gives a generous duration too (I think like 6 seconds at max wis). Had +5 defense on equip, so its a really great tome for rushing. Would def carry as a swapout
I have been maining priest for about 8 years now, and I can tell you that neither are very good, but they are extremely fun to use if you are willing to take some risks.
= 